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Interview with Gulwali Passarlay

The Student Diversity Forum have been busy again this week. They took part in an interview session with Gulwali Passarlay, author of The Lightless Sky, which is about his journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan to The UK.

The group have been working with My Bright Kite, a charity that works to empower and support the wellbeing and inclusion of young asylum seekers and refugees. Students had an informal session with Gulwali before they had the opportunity to ask him the questions that they had prepared. This session was filmed and will be used by My Bright Kite as a resource to help other schools across the country understand some of the issues faced by young asylum seekers and refugees. The confidence, maturity and professionalism of the Diversity Forum pupils during this session was amazing.

Our Diversity pupils also shared the many things that they found welcoming at Lawnswood School when they started here. A number of our pupils have left home countries, lost family and had similar traumatic journeys like Gulwali so this was a very moving and emotional session. Hearing how he overcame adversity to make a success of his life definitely inspired our students.

We hope to use this resource across our school in June during Refugee Week so all our pupils get to benefit from hearing Gulwali’s story. A copy of The Lightless Sky will be available in the school library so pupils can read his extraordinary story themselves in detail.